Affirming Divergence: Deleuze’s Reading of Leibniz

Alex Tissandier argues that an understanding of Deleuze’s relationship to Leibniz is essential for a full understanding of his philosophy. Throughout Deleuze’s work we find two opposing characterisations of Leibniz. On the one hand Deleuze presents Leibniz as a conservative theologian committed to justifying the order and harmony of a God-governed world. On the other, Leibniz appears as a revolutionary thinker credited with ‘the most insane concept creation we have ever witnessed in philosophy’. Tissandier traces Leibniz’s ambiguous status for Deleuze in order to provide a framework for explaining two key ideas in Deleuze’s own philosophy: a concept of difference that is not reducible to a relation of contradiction and an account of the genesis of the world that does not presuppose the structure of representation.